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Drupal will not be ugly; we will not punish dissent

Posted on Wed, Sep 25, 2013 by Jesse Beach

The Drupal community is looking inward. This introspection was in large part sparked by the BackDrop fork of Drupal. In short, Jen Lampton and Nathan Haug selected a specific commit of the Drupal repository and set off on a new project from that point in time in Drupal's development.

Drupal is an open source project. Forking is a right anyone has under its licensing terms. We all make a little fork of Drupal whenever we create a local copy.

I don't really want to address the issue of forking the project. I want to bring up one very important point.

We are not an ugly community.

I have heard whisperings during the first two days of DrupalCon Prague about Jen and Nate. Ugly things being said. I want to declare that we are not mean; we are not ugly. We do not ostracize individuals because they dissent. I, personally, will not tolerate anyone treating a member of our community with disdain because that person has a different opinion, or because they look or act in a non-normative way. We need non-normativity to remain fresh and cutting edge. We can deal with dissent through communication and debate. Sure, the debate might be intense and emotional. That's ok. But don't make it personal. Don't cut down the person because you disagree with the idea. Instead, let's really try to understand each other deeply. Drop your defenses for a moment and listen.

And just don't be mean, please. That's just not who we are. We are open, welcoming and supportive. That's what makes us Drupal.

I think that happens in any community like this. To take the
analogy further, if you fight with your brothers or cousin at
Thanksgiving, you still will see them at Christmas. I think the
concern here is that that won't be the case, that people are already
leaving not to return, and that there is no chance at making up. This
makes people understandably emotional, and ups the chances that things
get heated.

Also while I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment, pointed
discussion is sometimes necessary, as long as it's not personal
attacks. And even then, people pour their hearts into this stuff, so
it's always going to be somewhat personal and feel that way even if
it's not meant to be a personal attack. I just don't want us all to
be so polite that we never actually discuss the real issues present in
this situation.

Thank you for this post. I've been involved in numerous open
source projects over the years and the Drupal community is by far the
cream of the crop. The community is very open to new ideas and helping
out anyone. Coming from the Wordpress community 8 years ago, this was
such a welcome change.

I think these kind of problems really aren't problems at all.
They just symbolize the enormous growth that Drupal has seen over the
past several years. So many times people look at forking of projects
as being an indicator of a fracture or problems, yet forking can
always help a project grow stronger with ideas that may not work or
too immature to work in a project like Drupal, with it's large
usage and mature architecture. Those ideas can then be hammered out in
that fork and later merged back in or used as a blueprint for
something much better. It's one of the strongest powers of open
source software and something that can really help with Drupal's
tremendous growth.

Ever since I saw a top level Drupal developer removing his comments
from the backdropcms issue queues because of being shouted at by
somebody offscreen from the community, I was waiting for exactly such
a comment by one of the top D8 developers - thanks a lot for this
post, Jesse.

Years ago I came for the software, and I have been staying for the
community since, before this even became a mission statement on
drupal.org.

I am here at DrupalCon Prague to learn D8 developing and theming,
the first new project after D8 release and contrib catchup will be a
D8 based project for sure. But at the same time I'm dreading the
day Drupal 6 will be out of support, as there are some existing D6
projects which cannot be upgraded for the expected price.

When I read the backdropcms statements, I only see concerns, no
personal attacks.

Here at DrupalCon Prague I see Nate giving a session about Webform
4 with interesting new features and I see Jen heavily involved in
helping with Twix: in a Twix session, a Twix lab and as part of the D8
Twix team.

I see a together!

Everyone of us owes the Drupal community to also try to understand
Nate's and Jen's concerns and at least learn about them on
the backdropcms website. Top concerns being about DX and performance
in D8 and about the price of upgrading every three years, which will
not be paid by small customers when there is no need for new features.
Some true weak points of current D8.

If only one of the Drupal community learns from the backdropcms
concerns and finds a way of improving one of these points in D8, that
one will be a hero, start making backdropcms obsolete in the most
positive way.

On the other hand, if only one goes the cheap and easy route to
blindly repel earnestly made concerns, that one will be a threat to
the community, not Nate or Jen or anyone of the backdropcms
people.

If the community would seperate, it would be not because of
backdropcms, it would be only because of people not listening to each
other and because of people hurting each other.

It's nice to read such a post!
That debates often turn into wars is a plaque for civilization and for
the evolution of ideas.
Humans can fight as in work, develop, evolve and respect. Not only as
in war, dominate, impose and destroy.

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